Mary MacLane (May 1, 1881 – c. August 6, 1929) was a controversial Canadian-born American writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing.

[2] MacLane was a popular author for her time,[3] scandalizing the populace with her shocking bestselling first memoir and to a lesser extent her two following books.

[2] MacLane was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1881,[4] but her family moved to the Red River area of Minnesota, settling in Fergus Falls, which her father helped develop.

She was, however, also influenced by such American regional realists as John Townsend Trowbridge (with whom she exchanged a few letters), Maria Louise Pool, and Hamlin Garland.

Her final book, I, Mary Maclane: A Diary of Human Days was published by Frederick A. Stokes in 1917 and sold moderately well but may have been overshadowed by America's recent entry into World War I.

Produced by film pioneer George Kirke Spoor and based on MacLane's 1910 article of the same title for a Butte newspaper, it has been speculated to have been an extremely early, if not the earliest, sustained breaking of the fourth wall in cinema, with the writer-star directly addressing the audience.

Among the numerous authors who referenced, parodied, or answered MacLane were Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harriet Monroe, lawyer Clarence Darrow, Ring Lardner Jr., Sherwood Anderson and Daniel Clowes in Ice Haven.

MacLane had always chafed, or felt, "anxiety of place",[2] at living in Butte, a mining city far from cultural centers, and used the money from her first book's sales to travel to Chicago and then throughout the East Coast.